It pains me to say this, but this sentence is written in passive voice. Passive is about the last word anyone would associate with me, but there it is.
For my readers who are not currently in 8th grade, writing in passive voice should be avoided. This according to my best friend, who was a writing tutor in college, and about a billion other writing instructors. Here is a popular example: Why did the chicken cross the road? That sentence uses active voice. Passive voice sounds like this: Why was the road crossed by the chicken?
It has something to do with objects and subjects and who is acting on who, but I can’t seem to keep it straight.
It took me three weeks to write my first post. And I don’t mean three weeks of deciding what to write or not finding time to write, I mean three weeks and 83 drafts later I finally, nervously, posted the final product.
Although I’m not sure why I’m nervous. This being a new blog, I don’t know who (if anyone) is reading it. I know my mom isn’t. But a girl can dream big, and I just know that once I’m horribly famous someone will write in and attack me for my use of passive voice. At that point I’ll be too rich to care, but still.
I really did try to get the passive voice thing down. I went to Powell’s Books and bought Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, On Writing Well, Eats, Shoots and Leaves and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. And I’m reading them. A little. I leafed through. Kind of.
Ok, so I don’t care about passive voice. Yet that didn’t stop me from obsessing over it for three weeks. So much so that after the 75th draft I read my husband the 76th and he said, “Where did you go?” I had completely lost my own voice in an attempt to stamp out any evidence of passive voice. My chiropractor asked me what the new bulge in my neck was all about. “Passive voice,” I replied.
So here’s the deal, before I become famous. I know that most of my blog is written in passive voice, and there are semi-colons where there should be commas, and I probably have sentence fragments, incorrect abbreviations and start sentences with conjunctions. Writing is something I want to get good at, and my hope is to get better as I write this blog. But my primary purpose is to deconstruct nonverbal communication in a way that makes sense to my readers and to dispense useable, practical information. Without losing my voice in the process. So please be kind and try and overlook my grammar. I can’t afford the chiropractic bills.
